Korach: Ambition

 How does the story of this parsha play in contemprorary America?  Korach has a lot going for him.  He is challenging the authority of the Old Guard.  He is trying to advance himself and others with him.  He is breaking down a hereditary system in favor of a democracy.  We all know that the message we should take away from the story is that those chosen by Gd prevail and it is wrong to challenge them.  That does not feel right to me as an  American.

My thinking about ambition has been molded by  biographies. Ambition is glorified in  our culture because it has been an element of such successful and beneficial  enterprises: Microsoft, Apple, polio vaccine, immnotherapy. Ambition has been glorified as the crucial quality that allowed these innovations and disseminated them.  But ambition, per se, is a belligerence, it is a warrior that is blind to its opponent.  In the story of Korach, we need to recognize the power and divinity of the opponent.

There is a reworking of the story of Cain and Abel here.  The sacred service is the source of deadly envy.  I Korach,  the risk of the service is underestimated by the upstarts.  The priestly rewards are hazard pay for confronting the poison gas of the incense and the nuclear power of the ark.  These activities cannot be undertaken without training and the protection of proper heredity.

The firepans of the rebels, the instruments of their ill-fated, attempted service are beaten into  a covering for the altar. This error leads to an innovation, a new sacred article that functions with the ongoing, established rite and memorializes the efforts of the misguided.

Great discoveries are built on past failures.